Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Adobe Illustrator

Reflection

• I have now completed all 3 sessions of the Adobe Illustrator workshops! HURRAY!

• If I'm being honest with myself, I was not looking forward to starting these workshops whatsoever! I've had the Adobe Creative Cloud for about a year now and always left Illustrator in the dust for Photoshop and InDesign. I really struggled with the software last year at Vernon Street while I was doing the Access to HE course. The pen tool was far too fiddly for me to get my head around and I couldn't keep track of where the handles and anchors were going. I would end up creating a curved mess on the screen and vowed never to touch it again!

• However, having much more detailed sessions broken into 4 hours of learning and 2 hours of assisted support has changed my mind completely - whereas before, we were only given an hour long session to learn the very basics of the pen tool and creating strokes and fills (due to the nature of the course and how it only ran from Wednesday to Friday, with us trying to complete as many modules as possible with enough time for the final major project).

• I took notes, engaged with the content despite having a twilight session and having really long days, and asked questions and for assistance with the tasks as and when I need it. I made sure I had completed enough of the tasks as possible before leaving to go home to ensure I truly understood what I was doing in order to do my sticker designs justice.

• I admire a lot of vector-based illustrators who focus on this process in their practice. Their reduced pieces looks effortless, sophisticated and professional and can be applied onto anything from websites to posters. 

• I now really, really, really appreciate how sophisticated this software is and I'm really anticipating making my sticker!

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Monoprinting

Monoprints

I really enjoyed monoprinting last year when I was on the Access to HE course; it was the first workshop I ever did in the LCA institution and therefore it has a very special place in my heart. I spent the majority of my time in the print room last year, developing a really strong print-based practice, and it was wonderful (as with the screen printing session) to get back to what I know best! As I was very familiar with the process, I had my cut paper stencils all ready to go and was zooming away with the inks and driers, piling everything onto my plate to create some lovely, reduced work. I often find the plate looks just as good, if not better than, some of the actual prints - so wanted to keep that too. Monoprints can give quite a professional aesthetic while still having a huge element of the hand of the maker seen within the outcomes and I really enjoy the slow and monotonous process and tweaking elements on the plate and turning the wheel of the press. It's relaxing and gives me a productive feeling!

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Gelli Prints

I discovered this 'mono printing without a press' home solution last year in response to my monoprint induction and quickly fell in love with it - using it in a lot of my projects since. I love how easy it is to do; not requiring fancy inks and driers, expensive printing presses or thick paper. It's quick and easy to build up layers with stencils, textures and found objects. The aesthetic is a lot more grungy, DIY and lo-fi which provides a nice contrast against the more professional-looking monoprinting. I used the same stencils as in the mono printing session to explore another way of printing with reduced forms. Even though I won't be using either of these processes in the final sticker design, it was nice to take a break from Adobe Illustrator and enjoy the repetitive motion of inking, building up a plate and printing!

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Sketchbook Development

• I am much, much happier with how my sketchbook development is evolving now that I have moved away from small, bold thumbnail designs and onto larger, circular proposals. This allows me to play with the available space to understand my composition, consider different viewpoints in a much more successful manner, and provide a bigger area to test materials. I've enjoyed having a larger canvas to create bold, striking imagery.

• Cut paper has been a great way of realising how vectors could look and I felt like I was using the pen tool in Illustrator as I moved the knife from angle to angle! Great practice!

• Now that I have realised my initial 10 ideas, I want to hone in on the ideas I think have the most potential to be turned into a sticker design; whether this is because I like the tag line / idea, the viewpoint and perspective of the design, the colours and shapes I considered, feel like an audience could connect with it, and so on.

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Potential Sticker Designs

• Watch Where You're Going! is very personal to me as it's something I face Every. Single. Day. without fail. Someone, who has been blessed with the wonderful gift of vision, purposely disables themselves in a busy area by attaching their attention to their phone screen - rather then watching where they are going! The amount of times poor Tami has had a paw stepped on, a bag whacked in her face or a suitcase banged into her body, is disgusting and disrespectful and I have absolutely no qualms with giving said offender a piece of my mind! People bumping into me, running past me and brushing against my arms because of being too concerned with their snapchat... things, whatever the lingo is nowadays, is alarming and makes me feel so uncomfortable! Hopefully this is a design a lot of people can connect with, as it mustn't just effect me. Offenders are everywhere and bump into other sighted people too! I particularly like the viewpoint from Tami and how she must see things; a clever human not being so clever anymore and totally ignoring her as she does an important job! "Don't walk into me, human! Okay... never mind, just step on my foot. That's hurts. That's fine."

• Enjoy Nature: This, admittedly, is something I didn't adhere to when I didn't have Tami 2 years ago. After leaving the comfort zone of high school where my friends looked after me and I could blend in, ignoring my disability as much as I could, moving onto college was difficult and being the only girl in a class full of boys was horrendous. I stuck out like a sore thumb and they quickly learned of my severe visual impairment; choosing to bully me by throwing things at me, calling me awful things, and purposely moving the things around at my desk space so I couldn't find them. After trying to ignore this for a few months I couldn't take any more and had to drop out - thus, letting go of my dream to have an art degree. This experience, in addition to being attacked at a concert shortly afterwards, meant I didn't leave the house for 7 years as my blindness took over and the little sight I had diminished. Having Tami meant I could enjoy the world again and I still feel like such a child full of wonder when I walk through the leaves or hear the birds sing outside and enjoy the fresh air! Being able to go out for a walk without having a major accident is such an achievement and enjoying nature is a massive bonus - and I feel like a lot of people take this for granted. I really love the simple paper cuts I used and hopefully could imbue some of the magic I feel when I'm standing in the rain, lying on the grass or being among the trees! The simple shapes and forms worked well here too in how they take up most of the available space, zooming right in on the beauty.

• Don't Make Obstacles! I mentioned this in my previous post and still really enjoy this theme. It is something I would like to develop further with additional roughs, thumbnails, iterations and character designs before possibly taking into the Adobe Illustrator software. I need to condense down my amount of colours if I am to take this idea further. What would convey the immediate danger from these objects without making my sticker unattractive and undesirable? I still want to have a playful approach so need to give careful thought to my colour choice...

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Initial Task 2

Final 10 Ideas

Here are my final 10 ideas which I will begin to realise through rough sketches, iterations and thumbnails in my sketchbook. I spent a lot of time over the past few days since receiving the brief  just sitting, thinking and reflecting about things I can do to inject kindness into my everyday life as well as bigger things that my peers could do to make a difference in the studio for me and my Guide Dog:

• Feed the Pigeons

• Flowers to Nurses

• Respect Rodentia
• Be Charitable
• Water Your Plant(s)
• Don't Make Obstacles!
• Make Time to Relax
• Enjoy Nature
• Watch Where You're Going!
• Drink Less Coffee

I considered short snappy titles that go straight to the point; almost like a tagline on a product, using literary devices such as exclamation marks to really get the point across and alliteration for repetition of letters employing a nice flow to the title. One thing did come to mind; are we allowed to feed pigeons anymore?

• The Mirror: Lonely Woman Must Pay £2,300 for Refusing to Stop Feeding Pigeons
• Daily Mail: Pensioner Fined £50 for Feeding Pigeons
• The Sun: Pensioner Feeding Pigeons in the Park Fined £80 for Littering
• Metro: Council Takes Teenager to Court for Feeding McDonald's Chip to Pigeon

I have heard a number of stories in the news of older folk extending a kind hand and wanting to share their lunch with a friendly pigeon. Jobsworth council people who spot the act will then fine the old person, due to "health and safety" or littering reasons - even though the pigeon will eat everything and nothing is littered at the end! It is a city-by-city and region-by-region law, so I investigated further into whether the feeding of pigeons is against the law in Leeds.

Nothing in this information pack mentions whether it is illegal to feed pigeons... from further investigation, I happened upon this thread on a forum between a gentleman and an environmental services practitioner and environment and housing services manager from Leeds City Council. After much debate, it is concluded that it is, in fact, not against the law exactly - but is encouraged to be contained within quiet, open spaces rather than busy squares or near populated houses or shops.

Good enough for me... back to the task!

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Be the Change You Want to See!

One of the most frustrating things in my day-to-day life is the amount of obstacles I come across, impeding my path and making it hard for me to get around with my Guide Dog. The worst offenders are the chairs in the studio at the end of the day; splayed out at odd angles and presenting a maze! Tami is fabulous, but there is only so much she can do and it is very difficult for her to do her job when the exit is blocked. Is this something I want to tackle in my sticker design? A random act of kindness others can do?

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Sketchbook Development

• These are my initial responses to the themes I carefully considered for my stickers. I began on quite a small scale to get as many quick ideas down as possible, and found that initially effective, but wasn't happy with my lack of media and material testing and cramming everything onto a page. As the themes continued I wanted to experiment more with how the idea would sit within a circular frame, how the flat vectors would work and consideration for the limited colours.

• I had the most fun designing the demonic obstacles and giving them personalities matching how I have experienced them in the studio space - the dreaded rucksack with its arms ready to grab at my legs and make me fall, the sneaky snake-like scarf slithering itself around my ankles, the lone, silent slippery glove waiting like a comical banana ready to catch me out!

• Going forward, I want to continue with spacing out my ideas on the pages, giving them chance to breathe, continuing to implement the circular frame so that I can give consideration to the available real estate, the composition, the viewpoint and how the shapes will interact with each other.

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Initial Task 1

Anna Kövecses

Anna is one of my favourite vector illustrators as I love the simplicity of the work she makes. Her colour palettes use muted backgrounds matched against brighter, more saturated values evoking a feeling of nostalgia and harking back to children's picture books from the 60's, '70s and '80s - which used expanses of flashy colour against muted creams and greys with a musty book smell to match! She uses very rotund shapes with very little use of angles, and no stroke outlines, to give a friendly approach and tone of voice with effortless simplicity of reduced forms.

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Susie Hammer

Susie Hammer is very playful with her shapes and proportions, and the way she arranges the shapes gives a quirky disjointedness and altogether imperfectness that works in such a naive and charming way. I love her use of colour and pattern to add a sense of fun and sillyness to her characters. Her colour palettes tend to be quite pastel-based with a mid-saturation level; not too garish but not too watery at the same time. The unconventional proportions and forms placed at odd angles provide a quirky aesthetic - and again, this illustrator uses very rounded vectors with no strokes to give an appealing and softer approach.

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Stay Home Club
https://stayhomeclub.com

I discovered the Stay Home Club through the briefing presentation and really liked how the same idea of representing something on a small scale, with minimal imagery, has been implemented onto another object and form. These patches, from the online store, were my particular favourites in how one symbolic image has been used in each - using a large amount of the sticker to be as legible as possible - to communicate the intention and idea. I like the placement of the text dancing around the inside of the circular frame and feel it gives a neat, consistent look between each of the patches. Quite a number of colours have been used within these though, and I do believe that they could benefit from having one or two taken out and reducing those forms even more.

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Brownies / Scouts Badges

When this brief was being introduced, I immediately thought of scouts badges and how they are quite pictorial and representational of the task that had to be done in order to achieve the badge. After some researching, I really like these designs and how they use shape and colour - already in a vector-esque format. The borders are a nice touch too and not something I was initially considering, but it rounds the frame nicely and adds a pop of colour and interest.

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Gemma Correll

One of my favourite illustrators, Gemma Correll, is extremely successful at the moment and has created a series of patches to run alongside her wide range of applied illustrations. I'm particularly fond of her patches and how she uses very limited colour - usually 3 plus white grounding - to her advantage. She is known for her simple, whimsical illustrations and using red, black and white is her trademark. Simplification truly is amplification here! I especially love the borders and how she has used those to house the text; short, snappy phrases that makes us laugh. I want to be able to emulate such simple and effortless designs, grab attention to the text with having a colourful border and hopefully connect with an audience through understanding and respect.

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Acts of Kindness

Initial Thoughts

"Be the change you want to see in the world!" This brief really excites me as someone who always tries to help others and has done a fair bit of charity work for Henshaws, Guide Dogs, RNIB, Action for Blind People and East African Playgrounds. Because of my disability I have seen intense polar opposites in people every day, which has been a rollercoaster to experience since being matched to my Guide Dog 2 years ago. When introduced to someone new I don't know what I'm going to get from them! I want to be able to consider what I can do for the world as well as the acts of kindness would I like to see more of as someone with a disadvantage in a sighted, abled world.

Very recently, I purchased a birthday cake, two bunches of flowers, a vase, a card and some candles for my Mum's birthday and ran out of cash in order to get a taxi. As well as two full bags of shopping, I had my violin case and my Guide Dog with me. Lots to carry! There is a phone box in Morrisons where you can press a button for a taxi to be delivered - but I had to stop my assistance from taking me as I'd ran out of money to be able to afford one. A very kind gentleman stood behind me had overheard the conversation and gave me £10 in order to get back home without struggling! He really saved my beans and I was so, so grateful that I reached up and gave him a huge hug. It's acts of kindness like that, that really restore my faith in people and wanting to help out people in need. I've had people offer to help me cross the road through busy traffic and people going out of their way and offering to take me to a place when I am unsure of where I'm going.

On the flip side, I have had young people threaten to throw rocks at me and my dog - for not fitting into the norm, whatever normal is! - have had taxi drivers refuse to take me to university making me incredibly late and emotionally distressed, people comment on why I am bothering with getting my degree when I can barely see, people ignoring me and walking into me on a daily basis, bashing their bags into Tami's head as they rush past, and a general feeling of not being welcome in many places. I deal with obstacles on a daily basis and find it extremely hard sometimes to exist with so much ignorance. A lot of the time it is down to lack of education around disability.

I want to be able to convey some of my experiences, both good and bad, and will need to explore visual ideas rather than just pictures. I will work primarily with shape and reduced forms and need to consider the arrangement and composition of shape - reminding myself to keep it simple!

Small and personal: educating people on disability, visual impairment and the important work of Guide Dogs.

Local area: Reducing litter and pollution.

Global actions: Helping with reducing global warming and pollution, bringing people together rather than focusing on our differences, equality, sustainability, education, food and clean water for all.

Social, ecological, cultural, silly: I like the idea of having a silly visual pictogram but with a serious message. I think this will give an element of charm and allow me to be playful with my ideas.

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Reduction Workshop

This workshop was such a turning point for me in terms of realising how much my style has changed since starting the illustration course! Just 6 months ago, back in September, the tone of voice in my illustration was to be as realistic as possible - showing that my visual impairment may be an obstacle and something I have to work twice as hard at in order to complete a drawing, but I can do it nonetheless and just as good as a sighted person. Now I have let go of that feeling of needing to please myself and a sighted audience by being as accurate as possible, not wanting to show mistakes and therefor failure, and have become more playful, more relaxed and more experimental in my image-making. I didn't feel as comfortable drawing in the first way anymore and much preferred the simplicity of the negative space and the cut paper - still being able to tell the same story but with a charm and a crafting to it.

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Acts of Kindness Ideas

My Acts of Kindness	Others' Acts of Kindness
Feed the pigeons	Move your bags and chairs out of the way!
Drink less coffee	Watch where you're going!
Give flowers to nurses	Respect rodents
Educate people on disability	Don't litter

For my next steps, I now want to explore visually some of my initial ideas and experiment with basic forms, shapes and colour. I always need to attend each and every Illustrator workshop as I am pretty underconfident in using the software at the moment! The pen tool seems really difficult to use and anchors and handles are rather fiddly. I need to get used to these and develop my own systems of learning in order to be able to draw reduced shapes.